I am enjoying a quiet morning before the craziness that is Black Sheep Gathering starts tomorrow. I need to pack my shop into my car for my vendor booth, clean the trailer for the sheep to be loaded into, brush Kate so she looks her best for the herding demos, print pictures and information for my farm display booth, and a lot of other little things….but right now I am taking a deep breath 🙂

While I was taking my deep breath, I realized that I had not shared my Black Sheep Gathering Fiber Arts entry on my blog.

I used the BSG logo as my inspiration, but wanted to incorporate all of the wonderful breeds that can be seen at the show.

I used wool from each breed and most of it came from farms here in the NW. The only exception is the Wensleydale and that wool came from Jackie Post at Wooly Adventures.

She lives in California and the wool came from Marley, a sheep with a LOT of character.

A lot of these farms are good friends and are going to be at Black Sheep Gathering – I can’t wait to see them!

Yesterday, we worked on my son’s Fiber Arts entry and I made one of my own…

My son made his own felt Rose. We used a new kit to make our own pups. The kit has molds and it was a safe way for a child to make a 3D felt object, less chance of poking fingers with the felting needle!

We are officially done showing sheep and attending fiber shows for 2010. This year’s Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival was a great way to finish the season. The sun was shining on Saturday and attendance was high.

All of these bags left early in the morning…

and most of these little buggers left on Saturday…

I love them, but making this many was a little overwhelming. I felt bad coming home with one lonely little sheep, so she is keeping me company in my office 🙂

I loved the comments I heard about the sheep and the bags – ‘I REALLY don’t need this, but I MUST have it’, ‘This looks just like the sheep I used to have’, ‘My friend just bought a new car and this little sheep is going to be so cute hanging from the mirror’, and many more that I forgot but enjoyed in the moment! In addition to all of these sheep finding new homes, quite a few people bought the kit so they could learn how to make themselves a little flock.

This year I found myself needing to show sheep and man my vendor booth all at the same time – WHAT??? I can multitask well, but not that well 🙂 Thanks to several good friends, I had plenty of help – this is one of my favorite things about fiber shows! While I was thinking about who I could ask to help me show sheep, I remembered that Kristine had offered her showing skills to me earlier this year. Although she had plans on Saturday afternoon, she gladly agreed to help. She hasn’t shown livestock in quite a few years, but it didn’t show. Since we were both showing, there aren’t very many pictures to show of the jacob show. So, I will just say that there were 4 breeders and some very nice sheep 🙂

Kenleigh’s Ironside came home as the Champion ram and Kenleigh’s Mollala was Reserve Champion ewe.

It has been 14 years since it rained at this event and that is amazing for the end of September in the Northwest. The sunny stretch ended on Sunday. We woke up to a drizzle and by mid-morning – it was POURING!!! About half of the vendors are outside on the lawn, including my booth! Thanks to some help from my husband, we were able to put walls on my canopy and everything got damp instead of wet 😉

Thanks to some more help from friends and my husband, we had the 7 sheep we brought to the show shorn and then I got to walk around and visit the other vendors! These two pieces weren’t for sale, but they were some of my favorite things that I saw…

and another one of my favorites…the blueface…

their ridiculously huge ears and eyes…

and their super shiny curls.

I only bought two fibery items…

this beautiful and super soft blueface roving…

and some colorful goodies.

You’ll have to wait to see the other item I came home with – I am so excited because it is going to make sheep work a lot easier and dare I say… maybe even fun!

Yesterday was a nasty day – sideways rain for most of the day with a frigid wind that whipped right through you. A good day to stay inside and work on some projects.

My son has been wanting to felt a life sized cat 🙂 can’t say he doesn’t have lofty goals! I wanted to try a new idea that was rolling around in my head. So we grabbed some wool and got to work.

It was going to take a lot of needle felting to get a life sized cat, so I took a technique I have seen before and had him wet felt the body.

You start by using a nylon and stuff it with wool…

keep stuffing until you have the desired shape and it is packed tight.

Then comes the easy part – throw it in the washing machine! Run it through one washing cycle and one drying cycle. To save on electricity and water, I threw our items in with a load of laundry.

I wanted to see if I could make the little sheep bodies with this same technique. I stuffed the amount for one sheep and then tied a knot and stuffed more in.

I used this otherwise ruined fleece. It is a blueface fleece that I washed and didn’t get all of the lanolin out and it is very cotted now. It worked great!

Here is the start to his cat.

We felted the head seperate from the body and he needle felted them together. He is going to needle felt legs, ears, and a tail today and add the finishing touches tomorrow. He is so excited to have an inside cat 🙂

I had a request for colored sheep, so we played with kool aid and dyed the little, felted sheep bodies.